Local News

Too many blow-out games, less competitive balance in tournaments and demoralized young players looking to quit minor hockey are the end result of Hockey Edmonton’s new tiering system, say minor hockey parents, coaches and organizers.

The frustration with the Hockey Alberta-mandated tiering system, along with ongoing friction with the Hockey Edmonton executive, has become so intense that a number of the longtime board members of the Edmonton Minor Hockey Week committee are resigning. Joan Kirillo, Rod McMahon and Darrell Davis are all leaving, as is Bill Ross, who has been a tournament volunteer for 52 years.

“It was just an accumulation of things that happened while building up to do this tournament that kind of, if you don’t mind, pissed us all off,” Ross said.

Many coaches say the new tiering means their players have no chance to compete in games. Coach Ryan Betker’s North SEERA Peewee Tier 3 team has one win and 18 losses this year.

“We know going into games we will lose, the question is how bad,” Betker said. “While coaches and parents try to stay positive, it has been very difficult on the 11- and 12-year-old players, and many are not likely to continue their hockey journeys as a result.”

Betker is also thinking of packing it in as a coach. “This year has also been my hardest and most challenging year.”

Mike Wells, head coach of the Northstars Atom Tier 6 team, which has nine wins and seven losses, said there’s been a huge number of mismatched games in his tier of 27 teams. “Getting blown out is not fun for the kids, and blowing out teams is not fun either. I have been on both sides this year. We are looking to grow the game, but I know of players who do not want to play anymore after this year because of this season.”

“I can honestly say with the new tiering model if Hockey Edmonton was looking to try to chase kids away from the game they are doing a fantastic job,” said Mike Barich, coach of the NE131 Braves in Peewee Tier 1, a team with a 0-19-1 record, 49 goals for, 154 against.

Dean Hengel, executive director of Hockey Edmonton, said the new tiering system is now under internal committee review.

Hengel says he’s heard “discontent” about the new tiering model but he wants to hear what the committee finds before he spells out exactly what might need fixing. “Whether there’s significant amendments, or whether there’s tweaking, that’s what we’ll find as a result of the feedback we’ll get from the committee’s work.”

The goal is to reduce or eliminate blow-out games within a tier, Hengel said. “It’s going to take time to get it fine tuned.”

In general, the purpose of tiering is to provide high-skill competition for top players and to not overwhelm low-skill players by having them face high-skill players.

But it’s difficult to get teams properly placed at the right tier, especially when trying to match teams from different communities in Alberta against one another in tournaments and playoffs.

Each town and region previously had different systems of tiering so, for example, a Tier 2 team from Edmonton was likely not at the same level as Tier 2 team from Cold Lake or Medicine Hat. In an attempt to address this, Hockey Alberta standardized tiering this year, so that a Tier 2 team from a town would more likely be at the same level as a Tier 2 team from a city.

Hockey Alberta mandated there would be six tiers in each age category across Alberta, with no sub-tiers allowed.

The move to this new tiering system has gone over more smoothly in other parts of the province, Hengel said, but Edmonton’s hockey system is much more complex because it includes teams from surrounding towns and from many different-sized associations within the city itself.

Edmonton used to divide its teams into as many as 17 tiers in an age group, not the six tiers now permitted. At the same time, the tiers have moved from having eight to 10 teams, to 15 to 30 teams, with huge disparities between the top and bottom teams at each level.

There were 45 utter blowouts in Edmonton minor hockey week tournament games this year, games where a team lost by seven goals, McMahon says. Last year there were just 25 such blowout games.

“It was kind of disheartening to see,” McMahon said of the increased blowouts. “The thought that crossed my mind, as well as many others on our Minor Hockey Week committee, is that something is not right.”

The tiering went too far, too fast, McMahon said. It’s not right to limit things to six tiers, not when new tiers or sub-tiers could be created. “To me there’s got to be a better way.”

Kirillo, chairwoman of the Edmonton Minor Hockey Week this year, says the changes in tiering were made without enough thought about what is best for the majority of players, especially at the non-elite level.

The net result will be children quitting the sport, Kirillo said. “I just think that a lot of people will quit … If you continually get beat, if you continually get blown out, it is not fun. And we’re supposed to be there to make sure that the programs are fun and that people want to do this. I think the adults have lost their way.”

In the end, Hengel is correct to say that this issue needs thorough study. My own sense, though, is that this new model has failed Edmonton minor hockey players.

The old system for tiering here wasn’t perfect but it wasn’t broken. It certainly didn’t need major surgery. In other years most teams in most tiers had a realistic shot at having close games and even at competing for a championship, but this new tiering has greatly reduced those chances.

Endless losing is tough on a team and on players. It leads to players quitting. So whatever went wrong, it can’t be allowed to happen again next season.